


The Just and the Unjust

by cleodoxa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Darkfic, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-12
Updated: 2010-07-12
Packaged: 2017-10-10 12:52:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleodoxa/pseuds/cleodoxa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU set four years after HBP.  Cut off from the wizarding world, the country in chaos, Lucius and Hermione have to try to win the war all by themselves.  They don't know how to begin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Youroctober for beta reading. Written for the hp_darkfest.

  
  
  
  
  


**Entry tags:**

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[fic](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/tag/fic), [hp](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/tag/hp), [the just and the unjust](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/tag/the%20just%20and%20the%20unjust)  
  
  
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**Pairing(s)/Characters:** One Draco/Bellatrix scene, otherwise gen mostly centring around Lucius and Hermione.  
**Summary:** AU set four years after HBP. Cut off from the wizarding world, the country in chaos, Lucius and Hermione have to try to win the war all by themselves. They don't know how to begin.  
**Prompt:**"There was reason to fear that, like Saturn, the Revolution might devour each of its children in turn." -- Pierre Vergniaud  
**Rating:**NC-17  
**Word count:**15, 863  
**Warnings:**Dub-con, some violence, character death  
**Author's notes:**Thanks to Youroctober for beta reading. Written for the hp_darkfest.  
  


_   
**The Just and the Unjust Part One**   
_

  
Draco kneels up on his bed, his head hanging out of the window. Flickering gold September sunshine suffuses the garden. As Draco draws several shallow breaths in quick succession he inhales the smell of autumn, in which there is, beyond the wild scattering and decay of bright leaves, the hard, clear note of bare branches and ice. Draco still associates the smell with all the hubbub of the new school year. He supposes he feels this distinct feeling of surprise every year not to find himself at Hogwarts because he never had his final year there.  


  
He hears a sound behind him and turns to find Bellatrix standing in the middle of his room, with the air of one in search of something, the door closed behind her.  


  
"Haven't you got anything to do, Draco?" his aunt asks, twisting her mouth.  


  
"Not just now," Draco says faintly, praying she's not going to start. He sits on his pillow, knees under his chin and tries to look nonchalant yet serious. Bellatrix sits at the foot of the bed and crosses her legs with a curiously camp flick of the ankles.  


  
Draco realises he can think of absolutely nothing appropriate to say in the way of polite conversation and stares pleasantly past her head for several minutes, waiting for the stupid hag to go away. When he finally glances at her, mild disappointment crosses her face.  


  
Then she tosses her head, determinedly holding his gaze, and slowly undoes the front of her robes. She is wearing a dirty white bra, which she pulls off over her head.  


  
Draco hadn't noticed before now that he had formed a hypothesis, but Bellatrix has exactly the breasts he'd expected. Melodramatically heavy and round with bruised purple-red nipples, the cool air from the window (perhaps) gnarling the aureoles bumpy as blackberries. It takes a few moments before he looks at them in the spirit with which they are shown to him. In his mind he'd gone from handkerchief retrieval to madwoman exposure before _sex_ occurred to him.  


  
His moment of cool surprise is smothered when Bellatrix quickly shifts, pushes his legs down and plants her knees on either side of Draco's hips. Draco looks at the hair falling over her right temple in two slightly greasy ringlets, at the lines by the corners of bitter-brown eyes. Struggling to suppress a sneer, he wants to tell her to get lost. But then Bellatrix pushes her robes down further and he sees her narrow waist and the flare of her hips. The skin there is creamy and warm looking; somehow her midriff is easier than most body parts to see as simply skin. So before he knows it, she has engaged his attention.  


  
His prick leaps a little and either she can feel it or complacently guesses, because she laughs and says, "Don't worry Draco, _that_ knows what it's doing."  


  
She speaks with that affected singsong that never fails to make him seethe, so it's difficult to differentiate nuances of patronage. However, Draco strongly suspects Bellatrix has forgotten how old he is. He wants to snort if she thinks he's a virgin or anything like it.  


  
He _did_, however, spend more time with girls than he does now. Normally to be the Minister for Magic's son is a most prosperous thing. But now the source of power is Voldemort. People might be ready and eager to sacrifice all that is clean about them in hope that the spring will let trickle their way that which seems to supersede any such consideration. Only, the second-hand distillations from that spring seem to be an altogether murkier, more volatile quantity, and far less attractive.  


  
Altogether, the cock-a-hoop experimentation back at Hogwarts was more exciting than anything that has happened to Draco since. He often thinks of solemn little Asteria Greengrass. She'd thought he was absolutely wonderful, which made her way of conducting intercourse like a hushed funerary rite a lot more endearing.  


  
When Bellatrix pulls off her robes altogether, Draco can't tell whether she wasn't wearing knickers, or managed to pull them off with the same movement. Draco smiles in the corner of his mouth at the thought that even Bellatrix might be a little ashamed of her underwear.  


  
She pulls his robes up and undoes the trousers he wears underneath. When she strokes his cock it is hard, though the moment before she touched him he was sure it wouldn't be. Bellatrix raises herself over him, staring at him, right into his eyes. Draco feels unable to look away and his eyes water a little. He thinks of that Hippogriff, and he remembers how it went for him when he thought he could drop caution. He still feels he may laugh in her face at any moment, but then realises he cannot. Bellatrix is the Dark Lord's most appreciated Death Eater, if favourite was not the correct term. Death Eater.  


  
She lowers herself down on his cock and Draco closes his eyes for a moment. He rocks his hips a little in reaction, although Bellatrix is doing most of the work. His cock is pressed about by the hot sliding walls of her cunt. If she were a _girl_ he'd put his hands on her hips, but Draco is looking right at the lines by her eyes and he hates her. Then Bellatrix picks up his hands and presses them to her hips. As the rhythm becomes faster he almost forgets who she is, feeling only his prick inside her until he comes, his orgasm one hard, sharp moment. Just after, Bellatrix comes, her face screwed up tight, with a pained whine.  


  
Draco's cock slides from her easily. Bellatrix straddles him a few moments more, slightly out of breath but obviously exultant, laughing softly under her breath. Then she looks back at Draco's wary face, moves abruptly and rubs her cunt, slimy with strands of frothy white mucus, over his face. Draco's muffled yell is like that of a child who has had a snowball stuffed down their neck. Laughing aloud, Bellatrix scrambles into her robes and leaves, slamming the door. Draco scrubs his face convulsively with a corner of the duvet, the motion more instinctive than a Cleansing Charm. He is profoundly disgusted, and yet the juvenility of the gesture somehow relieves his mind. Turning on his side, he falls asleep.  


  
When he wakes several hours later, he hears voices downstairs, dying down from a crescendo. Draco doesn't know if his father is at home or at the Ministry, but he gathers that the Dark Lord is downstairs. The voices downstairs ramble, plead, suggest and babble excitedly – they've picked up some real enthusiasts from the generation between Draco's own and that of the old guard.  


  
Draco groans. Right now everything is about systematically tracking and destroying all fugitives, criminals and traitors. Draco is tired of the slow, slow discussion on How to Make Them Pay. There was a time in his life when he thoroughly enjoyed the ideology of extermination, and quite agreed that they should pay. But he'd imagined it more as an _instance_ – then riff-raff and traitors would know who counted. He hadn't seen a world where _such a lot_ of people kept on paying, and you had to keep making them. Draco's tired. And the Dark Lord's querulous dissatisfaction, the resentment that can never be assuaged, depresses him. The other Death Eaters have picked up on his lack of conviction, which spurs them to jeers both covert and overt. For his benefit, they engage in virtuoso hexing contests when they have a victim handy, and try to involve him in things that he partially escapes as the Minister's son.  


  
Draco wanders through a corridor illuminated with pink light from the setting sun. He thinks about going downstairs and really proving himself, getting involved. Something rolls underneath his foot and sends his legs skidding. He retrieves it from a far corner; a small golden ball. As he picks it up a small round panel falls out of it, revealing the ball hollow, and a screwed up bit of parchment escapes. Smoothing it out, Draco sees the stamp of the Order of the Phoenix above a message composed of runes. Draco's breath jumps when he sees the stamp. The rune for Untraceable jumps out at him, and a phrase he thinks may be an Unbreakable Vow. Taking it back in his room he makes it out properly, checking things again and again in the dictionary.  


  
The Order of the Phoenix is, in all sincerity, extending an offer to join to anyone who finds this ball. Any answer he makes will be quite untraceable to anyone not a member, and they have sworn themselves (using a runic variant of the Vow that entails the loss of voice, not life, which considering they are wizards fighting a war is almost the same thing) to offer him refuge and tell no one of his answer.  


  
Draco feels oddly warmed and flattered on behalf of the Manor itself that it should be supposed to contain anyone worth this trouble. It makes the place seem more normal and Draco is beginning to long for normality. He imagines being on the Other Side. There wouldn't be the constant need to avoid situations where he might have to use the Killing Curse. Incredibly, he has never actually done it, and Draco is terrified that he won't be able to. He imagines the Dark Lord offering to teach him, demonstrating by using Narcissa. Away from here, he wouldn't be used always as a weapon against his father. And he wouldn't have to look at the people things _happened_ to, and make himself be glad.  


  
While he thinks these thoughts, almost unconsciously, he pledges himself underneath the writing on the parchment, using the same Unbreakable phrasing. Then, not quite sure what to do with it, he carefully puts the ball in a corner of his room. Standing outside, his hand on the door handle, Draco cocks his head. The feeling of relief in thinking merely _I can leave_ is incredible, though he doesn't know how or when.  


  
Draco sets off to his parents' bedroom. It always comes as a faint surprise that Lucius and Narcissa still retain the master bedroom, but the Dark Lord doesn't sleep. It is in the hidden chamber there that Lucius has been trying to create a duplicate Deathstick. Ollivander, who is kept about the place as a sort of prisoner, works with him on it, offering terrified but passionate assistance and advice.  


  
It is simply a stick of elder. With no centre, it does not even function as an ordinary wand. Neither Lucius nor Ollivander have the faintest idea what to do to it, but they have been trying all kinds of things. It's nothing like another Elder Wand, yet they have managed to do something to it. Trying to work out quite what that is causes them to be more confused than they were at the start.  


  
Draco has, unbeknownst to its creators, been regularly popping by to check its progress. He cautiously tinkers about with it and develops suspicions as to what uses it may be put to. His latest deduction, based on one or two coincidences after these experiments, is that the wand can do nothing itself, but has the power to affect other wands. Draco sits down at the table in the little cupboard room, where all this ambition takes place, to look through the latest notes. They reveal no startling new development and Draco takes to a sort of playacting with the wand. He likes the feel of it in his hand – his father's son; he does like to imagine being the possessor of the real Elder Wand. Idly tracing it about the tabletop he invents spells to block his least favourite Death Eaters performing assorted curses, and to switch the effects of one charm with another. Eventually it occurs to him that wishful thinking aside, he had better stop in case any of it actually does something.  


  
*  


  
Snape is at the meeting downstairs. He is not listening to what's being said. His face sourly noncommittal, his gaze travels slowly over the faces opposite him. When he has loathed, with blood red passion, his fill, he moves on to the next. Snape is getting increasingly desperate. The summer he killed Dumbledore he managed to help Potter leave his relatives' home safely, dropping Mundungus Fletcher a hint involving a plethora of Potters. (And by "plethora", he'd meant "plethora". They'd only mustered seven, and lost Moody.) Since then he has been unable to find a way to help with the Horcrux hunt. He is separated from his purpose and he has lost the knack of coping without one. Snape has become used to living with his past, having Lily and James' son so often before him. Without his past he has nothing to explain how he came to live this life, only the task of living the days his life consists of now. And to this anodyne existence of atrocity, he prefers his old bitterness, that well of bile to draw from.  


  
Voldemort sends him away to work on the potion of the moment. It is similar in effect to Veritaserum and will indeed pose under its name. However, the confessions its victims shall spill out will only be those demanded of them, as they admit to whatever crimes they are accused of. Of course, there is always Imperius, but these days one always suspects that that particular curse is present in any situation. This may even convince Mudblood sympathisers.  


  
After finding the little golden ball resting against a leg of his worktable, Snape quickly examines the contents. He signs the parchment (blank underneath the Order's message) with relieved and furious "at last" feelings intermingled. Not only that, but he extracts his memories; all those bloody memories of Lily, and James too, and then again Dumbledore, which, because of his own lack explain everything about him, and puts them in a phial, in the ball with the parchment. Unbreakable Vows or no, the Order will still demand things of him and it's infinitely preferable not to do it face to face.  


  
*  


  
Lucius is at the Ministry. A considerable crowd of fugitives has been brought in and Lucius has been overseeing the procedures prefacing their despatch at Malfoy Manor this evening. He doesn't quite see why they aren't doing it through the Wizengamot – it's not as though they have any trouble from them these days. Lucius's gift is for hypocrisy and he can never understand its neglect. He is living the dream of the Uncle Vernons everywhere – the opportunity to get his hands on the world from the newspapers, and be allowed to mould it. The necessity of doing everything under the auspices of Lord Voldemort renders it oddly imperfect, though. While Lucius deeply enjoys what he has, when he isn't worrying about his son, he's considering perfect power. What he wants seems so simple sometimes – that absence, just him instead – that instead of sleeping he finds himself working on fantastically complex theories about destroying the Dark Lord. He knows nothing about the Horcruxes, so none of it is actually constructive. Much of his hope rests on his "Elder Wand" creation. It is difficult to feel as though he's making progress; sometimes he says to Ollivander that maybe Death did make the original. Lucius never actually believes this, and is convinced that in the end he will make a Deathstick mightier than the original.  


  
*  


  
Hermione, Harry and Ron have been on the run for nearly four years. They have seen no one else apart from Ron's family and the Order of the Phoenix, even these sights were but glimpses. Mostly they lurk about the countryside and alternate between scouring it for Horcruxes and racking their brains for likely places to comb through.  


  
They did find one Horcrux, near the beginning. The only sustenance of their quest lies in fixating on possible connections they can hypothesise between Voldemort and a person, place, thing or incident. When the three of them started out they didn't quite have the hang of creating these out of thin air, and had to go looking for them. It was Hermione's idea to break into Whyfinn House, where wizarding records, including old newspapers, were archived. Harry, Ron and Hermione spent several evenings searching through the newspapers for any link to Voldemort and his Horcrux making activities.  


  
They started looking at newspapers from when Riddle was still at school, to be on the safe side, and as they went on, long before Voldemort came out into the open, they noticed a decided increase in the number of stolen artefacts, sinister disappearances and unexplained deaths. Having nothing better to do, they wandered uselessly around the sites of a dozen of these thefts and murders. They simply didn't know how to detect any hidden Horcruxes, and were miserably aware that they could be walking right past them all the time. Harry fulminated against Dumbledore, because however proud and individual Voldemort fancied himself, Harry didn't see how tracking down Horcruxes are any easier than if they were Portkeys, and could be lurking in any waste bin.  


  
It was Harry who suggested that the murder of Edmund Bang should go on their list. Bang, being an elderly wizard at the time of his death, who was Minister for Magic during Tom Riddle's youth. They all agreed that the murder would be exactly the kind of gesture Voldemort enjoyed. (The more time the three spent on Voldemort's trail, the more resentful they become that such a sour, psychologically obvious egomaniac should cause such trouble.)  


  
Harry, Ron and Hermione turned up at Bang's house in the middle of the night. The family currently living there was fast asleep indoors. They performed their usual gold divining charm. It found something, but then again sometimes it did. They'd never turned up anything precious, let alone a precious object that'd had the Horcrux treatment. This time, digging up the lawn, they found Rowena Ravenclaw's golden cloak-pin, the head a cluster of sapphires. The only problem was that people who got too close to it became compelled to stab themselves in their hands with it over and over again. Harry lost a finger to it before they managed to secure it.  


  
After that, there was the problem of destroying it. Though they constantly exclaimed in despair that there must be one basilisk left somewhere in the world, they had no more basilisk venom on hand. They tracked down the only other poison in the world strong enough for the job in Italy. There was an old woman who owned what appeared to be the last bottle in existence – the substance involved Dark Arts, centuries of brewing and extinct creatures. She was willing to give it to them on condition that Harry made an Unbreakable Vow to give her his firstborn child. Neither her hearing nor her English being all that, she didn't notice that he swore not to give her his firstborn. When they poured the poison over the cloak-pin it vaporised, and it was blissful to put a little end to something.  


  
After that, there is nothing. It is dull and depressing beyond belief. They quickly learn that, never mind Horcruxes, hope is the most elusive, necessary thing of all. In some ways, each of them withdraws into themselves. They grow perfectly tired of each other on many levels and have fits of sullen isolationenlivened by vicious rows. But sometimes Hermione looks at Ron and Harry and knows that it is because of this time that none of them will ever love anyone more than they love each other.  


  
Hermione doesn't know why she leaves them. Perhaps her identity, tied into a three-way entity, has gone to sleep, and she is simply trying to shake out the pins and needles. It seems to happen of its own volition and it is nothing important anyway; just another dangerous exploit that will probably end in one of two kinds of nothing.  


  
She has been looking through books of wizarding genealogy, drearily tracking family trees with a finger. She halts at arbitrary names to wonder if they, alive or dead as the case may be, know what became of the scores of missing magical items that run through her mind. (Voldemort can't be responsible for all of them, and she'd rather like to know where some of them have got to.) Zabazius Sabinta catches Hermione's interest. He is, despite the Slytherinesque sibilance of his name, among the most direct, living descendents of Helga Hufflepuff. He has never been a Death Eater, but is known to have consorted with them a great deal, especially the first time round. His sympathies are profoundly anti-Muggleborn. Hermione feels that stowing the cup with Sabinta is the kind of thing Voldemort might feel appropriate. Even if this is not the case, Sabinta is known to take a keen interest in the movements of gold, precious objects and stocks and shares that belong to other people. Hermione can't help but feel that he might have kept enough of an eye out for a cup belonging to his illustrious ancestress to know something useful.  


  
All in all, Hermione feels he may as well be another stop on the Places There Might Be Horcruxes Without Our Ever Knowing Tour. She might, however, have some idea of confronting Sabinta, which is not something they've ever done before.  


  
Hermione breaks into Sabinta's house in the early morning. He finds her in the kitchen making herself a cup of tea. (It will actually be quite a while before Hermione realises things really must have got to her.) Sabinta recognizes her at once – she and Ron tie for the second most wanted person in the country.  


  
"To what do I owe this honour?" he asks, making Hermione jump as he moves away from the doorframe he was leaning against. Zabazius opens the cupboard to get a teacup for himself and Hermione resumes stirring in her sugar. She calmly tells him that she wants to know about a cup of Hufflepuff's and feels thoroughly gratified at her perspicuity when Sabinta does indeed know what she's talking about.  


  
"I haven't got it and I don't know why you thought I did," he tells her. "But I'll tell you this; five years ago I saw it at Malfoy Manor, in a cabinet in the black drawing room. And I'll tell you another thing; I couldn't give a shit about you bloody Mudbloods. You don't belong. But," he lowers his voice, "I couldn't give a shit about Tom Riddle either. And whatever happens, there needs to be people who'll _try_ to do something about him, and there aren't enough of them." Hermione watches with some astonishment as his voice shakes with righteous outrage. "So I'm going to let you go, quite free. Isn't that nice?"  


  
*  


  
Hermione knows Sabinta may be sending her off on a malicious, wild goose chase, but she sets off for Malfoy Manor anyway. Instead of Apparating, she travels a ridiculous amount of the way by train and bus. Hedwig finds her a couple of times; Hermione thinks hard about her messages but ends up scrawling something cryptic. While she is away from Ron she finds herself thinking about how much she wants to be living another life with him. It's been such a long time since that tacit acknowledgement, their last year at school, that they cared for each other. If they were living normal life they would have invented a new kind of relationship out of their old one. But as it is, everything is undeveloped. Hermione imagines her love for Ron is like a cellar, lying underneath their current life. She wants to shut the door behind her and sink onto its stone steps while it reveals itself to her, dark with a slightly alarming, warm draught blowing through. Much like the Underground. Hermione smiles at the public transport theme. She and Ron have had sex twice and it was like going down into that cellar and resurfacing in another dimension.  


  
At first, being in the Muggle world is like slipping into a warm bath. Then Hermione sees a few newspaper headlines outside newsagents as she passes through various high streets. She hears people talking in the streets, in shops, on trains. Hermione feels as if she has been in a fairy hill for a century or so, for these tiny snatches are all of a Britain perfectly unfamiliar to her. She hadn't thought that the struggles of the wizarding world would show through so plainly on what Hermione has always thought of as the other side of the mirror. Daily life here has become an inexplicable affair of obscure explosions and roadblocks, deaths and disappearances. Often people can't quite remember what happened this morning and the politicians seem both wretched and distracted from the normal business of running the country. The Muggle ignorance is translucent at the edges, and this is what strikes Hermione the most. It is like the whole country knows it knows something it doesn't know it knows. Hermione thinks of the families of Muggleborn wizards, who must be a great source of the translucency.  


  
She sits on a bus eating a Mars bar, brooding on the fear and pain and anger of those families who know something, or even a great deal, of Voldemort's activities. She is passionately glad that her parents are in Australia and don't even know who they are, but suddenly Hermione wants them badly. She listens as two old women in front of her talk about fish. It emerges that one of the best fishmongers for miles has disappeared along with the rest of the street it was on – businesses, residences, _people_ and all.  


  
"And they've moved Davenport Lane to the right, you know, to fill the gap where Maple Street was. I mean I just don't see the point."  


  
Hermione supposes the old woman's "they" is the local council, working in more mysterious ways than ever. She leans her head against the window and seethes.  


  
The rage is still in her blood when she gets to Malfoy Manor. She searches the ground floor methodically; using all kinds of fussy spells they usually don't have the heart for on trips like this. She is interrupted by several Death Eaters who she manages to Stun or Imperio. She does something thoroughly disgusting to the eyeball of one, which makes her frantically drum her feet inside her head, in instinctive protest.  


  
After forty-five minutes or so Hermione is caught and overpowered by a large, blond Death Eater. She is dragged, kicking but not screaming, out into the garden. Voldemort is standing there. He smiles when he sees her and fixes her feet and hands to the air. There is a crowd of people already on the lawn and after a moment Hermione realises she is not the main event. A large group of these people are shackled; great heavy chains are wrapped around them. She recognises Dean Thomas. Hermione does not feel anguished repentance at having been so stupid, only dull resignation. There is horror in front of her, just a few moments away, and beyond that only destruction for herself. But it isn't here yet and she can't feel it.  


  
She watches the Death Eaters ostentatiously consult. In just a few seconds she will care and it will hurt. Hermione watches Snape. Earlier in the day she received a message with the information that Snape and Draco are ready to defect. For some reason Snape reminds her of stories about highly strung public school boys who throw themselves out of windows. He looks like a horse when it sweats and rolls back its eyes, pushed to the limits of what it can bear.  


  
Lucius Malfoy catches her eye as he walks across the lawn, smirking as he treads heavily on someone's leg. Standing by Voldemort, he observes the proceedings, looking to Hermione as she suddenly hones in on him with a crazy lurch of hatred, a complete fool. Because anyone who thinks it's fun to torture and kill people just because they can is a fool, and because he looks like someone thrilled to be directing a dance troupe or something. Only a little frustrated, as if the dance troupe isn't much good, and he is itching to get in among them and show them how it's done. Voldemort must see straight through him.  


  
It takes Hermione a moment to realise the Death Eaters have started, because they _haven't_. They are looking aggrievedly at their wands. Then someone says, "Crucio!", shaking his wand, and a string of vaporous Christs on crosses pours out the end of his wand, circling his head and groaning.  


  
Draco laughs loudly. Voldemort turns his head sharply towards him, and raises the Elder Wand. Draco is at once pushed towards the group of captives. Looking more nervous now and giggling, he says "Tarantallegra!" to a woman just in front of Dean Thomas. One of the Jesuses swoops up to him and wails in his ear. Cringing away as if it tickles and giggling harder, Draco starts yelling out . . . gibberish, it sounds like, but Hermione frowns in confusion when she recognises fragments of charms. She sees a look of betrayal creep across Bellatrix's face. Lucius lurches towards Draco, sensing that his son is in danger. He also seems to be listening to Draco's nonsense that sounds like it ought to make sense, and looking around him at the captives and the Death Eaters' malfunctioning wands as if he has some horrible idea what it is about.  


  
Then Voldemort moves. He pins Lucius to the air like Hermione and eviscerates Draco. He takes his time and the spitting becomes rain. He casts a Silencing Charm on Draco as he opens his skin. Hermione thinks this is because the agony of his child's screams might actually distract Lucius from what is happening. Then Draco is lying on the grass and he is . . .most certainly dead. Draco has gone. He is not actually mutilated but there is a lot of blood, which still streams even as the rain rinses it away.  


  
Then Lucius is sent into the Manor with a Death Eater to "fetch his Elder Wand", whatever that means. He returns, oddly, with a dark blue umbrella as well as what must be the "Elder Wand." Most of the Death Eaters have cast Impervio by now (borrowing a wand where necessary), or are enjoying themselves too much to care if they get wet. Voldemort tries to get Lucius to take the spells off the wands, but he merely looks at Voldemort blankly and hands him the wand. He drifts over to Draco and stands looking down at him.  


  
Tears are running down Hermione's cheeks and Snape looks as if he has _really_ had enough now. Hermione is jaded enough to wonder why she really cares about that snuffed-out life. It was something that Draco had wanted to get out, but what on earth had he been playing at? And oh, why did the figure of Lucius, standing by his body looking lost still feel like a smack in the face with its sheer horribleness. Merely on the scale of this evening's work it is only a trivial accident. It is probably for that very reason that Hermione wants to fall to her knees and wail like a banshee. It casts a slightly alarming retrospect upon her childhood self that the savage rage she feels now is the very same she has not felt since primary school and had to take part in group projects with stupid children who ruined everything.  


  
The rest of the fugitives are slaughtered, including Dean Thomas. No little trouble that might add to the killing experience is excluded. Hermione is soaked by now. Lucius keeps tilting his umbrella about so the raindrops spin out from it. Hermione thinks in exasperation that he seems to be playacting a confused personage pulled from the midst of that Renoir painting. When all the captives are dead, chains are taken off them and draped over Lucius and Hermione instead. Lucius stumbles and nearly drops his umbrella as they are dragged inside. It is almost pulled out of his hands, but he jerks it away and rolls it up. The Death Eaters are all a thrill with the joy of dethronement. Hermione thinks they must have taken Lucius and his position far too seriously for his deposition to affect them so. They ought to have seen that Voldemort deals no cards that aren't marked. She supposes, as they are tugged along to the accompaniment of jeers, that they are able to work for the man because despite everything, they still don't realise how merciless he is.  


  
Lucius and Hermione are shut up in one of the less important drawing rooms. The door locked behind them, the chains slide off; the room has been magically sealed. They sit opposite each other on elegant couches. Lucius slumps, his face grey, staring at the floor. His hand clutches his umbrella. Hermione sits still and her glance flits around, Lucius rendered an inanimate object. Hours pass. Hermione supposes it will be death in the morning for her, or some complicated hostage situation. She doesn't know what will happen to Lucius, Minister for Magic.  


  
Hermione's thirsty. She finds half a bottle of some bitter, burning alcohol in a corner cupboard. Then she sits some more and dismally contemplates the prospect of warning the absent figurehead of death and torture before her that she is about to crouch behind the sofa and piss into one of his vases.  


  
Lucius's feet move, drawing together as he sits up straight and looks at her for the first time. It's like some dart of thought is spiralling upwards through his body. When it reaches his face a bare, sharp look appears. "I want this – to go to blazes," Lucius says, his voice sharp and hard but the articulation clumsy.  


  
Hermione's eyes widen: she thinks of funeral pyres.  


  
"I want to bring it down," Lucius clarifies. "It – him – the Dark Lord." His own eyes widen and Hermione looks at the grainy silver grey.  


  
"Well," she begins falteringly. Hermione is used to people having their lives wrecked by Voldemort, and the normality of bloodthirsty rage in this context makes her feel a bit better about being shut up with him. But – "What do you think I can do about it? Why do you think you're all here in this house, _doing what you're doing_;" she almost retches – "if we can stop you? Things won't change just because you've changed sides."  


  
He seems to understand and in reaction begins to prowl irritably about the room, peering at things. Hermione leans her head back and her gaze meets the clock. Past three in the morning and she's been here over six hours. She doesn't know if she's impatient to reach the morning to discover what will be done, or if she'd rather the night stretched into infinity. Her gaze follows Lucius. He's behaving like a dispirited visitor at a bric–a-brac stall as he picks things up and puts them down again. He's making noises under his breath that began peevish before becoming whimpers of distress. Hermione guesses that before Voldemort returned, the Manor was well stocked with dodgy gadgets against the possibility of skeletons falling out of the closet, or crazed Death Eaters crawling out of the woodwork. Things are different now that the house is Voldemort's fort.  


  
Lucius peels back a rug and fingers the floorboards, his lips moving as he shakes his head. Suddenly his head shoots up and he goes to a small window to the right of the curtained French windows. He examines the wood around it. "Yes . . .yes!" Lucius says, his voice rising from a mutter to an exclamation. "We've still got a Juliet on this window!"  


  
Hermione sits forward at once. The Juliet charm has no real connection to the heroine of Shakespeare's play, but is based on the same course of action she takes; the principle of burning one's boats. The Juliet is a built-in exception to the generic magical sealing placed on the room. The window is not too small to climb out of. And as soon as they do so, to everyone in whose minds they live, they will die. They will become possessed of a non-specific but quite certain conviction that Lucius and Hermione have died. Hermione has heard of people being "undeaded" afterwards but no one seems to know how it happened. She thinks for a moment.  


  
"So, we're going to run away together and bring down Voldemort all by ourselves," she says questioningly.  


  
"You're a clever girl, aren't you?" snaps Lucius. "We'll manage."  


  
Hermione gasps while she levers her leg over the sill, her body crouched in the frame, as if she is leaping into freezing water. She lands neatly on her hands and feet. Lucius is ahead of her, moving through the bodies and the softly drizzling rain to find Draco. Getting to his knees, he leans his arms on either side of his son's head and stares wide-eyed into his face. Hermione doesn't know how he bears it; it isn't a pretty sight. Then he scrambles up and begins hunting the ground; he pounces on a sliver of wood.  


  
"It's from my wand, you know, my Elder Wand," he says to Hermione, who looks puzzled. "It's left over from cutting the wand. I brought it out with the wand and then I dropped it on the ground...I didn't know what to do with it." Lucius cups it in his hands and pleads, "Accio my wand." He and Hermione stare at the Manor for a few minutes. Hermione is wondering what she will do with him. Then the wand floats towards them and Lucius catches it with a shaking hand. "Accio . . . Hermione's wand!"  


  
Hermione almost kisses her wand when she has it clasped in her fist. Lucius drops the sliver on Draco's torso, which takes her aback because she's just been wondering what exactly it could do. He trudges towards the gates, which takes her back again because she'd expected him to want to bury Draco, or take him with them or something. She begins to trudge after him until she remembers something and hurries to catch him up.  


  
"I heard you had Hufflepuff's cup here. Did you? It's a Horcrux, do you know what that is? Voldemort made six and we'll have to find and destroy all of them before he can be killed. Do you understand?" She speaks as if to a foreigner.  


  
"Horcruxes?" breathes Lucius. "Hufflepuff's cup, yes yes! The Dark Lord has it somewhere in the Manor . . . I don't know if I can manage that . . . Accio won't do it." He goes back to Draco to retrieve the sliver of wood. They stand by the body;, Lucius cupping his hands around the phantom wand again. He stands so it looks like he is wringing his fists and importuning the sky. Hermione is at odds with his desperate solemnity, standing at his elbow making feverish demands and suggestions. Lucius doesn't respond; his voice grows louder and nearer breaking as his pauses grow more frequent. Just as he bursts out after his longest silence, Hermione sees a shape moving in the gloom. When the shape glints, she cries out and clutches Lucius's arm.  


  
Lucius again drops the piece of wood onto Draco and sets off, Hermione behind him clutching the cup to her bosom, chill against her skin. When the wind blows a leaf into her hair she transfigures it into a bag, which she slings across her shoulder, the cup inside.  


  
They walk until it becomes light. Hermione is desperate for sleep; she thinks about bed and breakfasts though she doesn't know when they open. When it is past eight and they are in the middle of a town, she suggests that Lucius transfigure his robes into Muggle clothes. She knows that nothing they do will get back to wizards, but she thinks of that Muggle ignorance – _innocence_ \- already damaged. It's so fragile, and she doesn't want to have anything to do with smashing it.  


  
Lucius glances around before standing in the mouth of an alley between two buildings to change his clothes. Hermione hovers like a dog owner waiting for their animal to "do its business". In Muggle clothes Lucius no longer seems like the man from the Prophet who terrifies Hermione.  


  
"I want to sleep," she tells him. Without a word he makes for a hotel across the road, though Hermione had had something cheaper in mind. She has to resort to Confundus. She feels guilty about leaving Lucius alone in his room for hours, but she can't resist the allure of rest.  


  
In her room she kicks off her flip-flops – for several days now she has been wearing the flip-flops, a short denim skirt and a tee-shirt – lies down on the bed and promptly begins to tremble before falling asleep, still shaking as she begins to dream.  


  
She wakes up around four and goes to Lucius's room. He lets her in. He's sobbing. Hermione thinks he might be sobbing harder than Bill did when Fleur was killed, harder than Tonks when Andromeda died, harder even than Seamus's mother when Seamus died. They sit at opposite ends of the bed. Hermione turns the cup in her hands and removes herself mentally. There is nothing overtly evil about the cup, but it is exceptionally cold and Hermione doesn't know if the mania to destroy it that comes over her when she handles it is entirely healthy or spontaneous.  


  
She doesn't notice Lucius getting up until he is throwing up in the adjacent bathroom. He runs the water a little, then comes back and sits down.  


  
"Well. I want to bring it all down." He looks at Hermione with obnoxious expectancy.  


  
Hermione says, "It's not really like a revolution. It's all about destroying these." She waves the cup. Then she has to talk for a very long time – about the diary, the ring, Ravenclaw's cloak-pin, the cup, and the locket they don't have. Three more Horcruxes to destroy and they don't know what one of them is. Nagini was eliminated when she was accidentally blown up a year or so ago. Easy enough to destroy, though she wasn't a Horcrux. The story is a long one, full of incidental detail, much of which involves Harry.  


  
Oh God, she thinks. Oh God, Ron and Harry. Hermione feels like she has grief ahead of her; she can't imagine affairs resolving themselves without it. However, she can't ignore the fact that grief will be happening to Harry and Ron right now. She doesn't feel terribly concerned for Harry. In a way she is glad, because she knows it will make him fight harder than ever and thinks of things he may not otherwise. Ron is different. She thinks of Ron sobbing and is shocked when the thought reaches between her legs. She knows Ron loves her. The vulnerability of Ron's emotions when not subverted into meanness in an attempt to protect himself, is the best thing about him. Which makes it seem less cheap, less manipulative, that those two times they had sex, what really did it for Hermione was the way that Ron was almost completely overwhelmed, his disbelieving love and gratitude. And a bit less cheap that Hermione's heart turns over with painful pleasure at the thought of Ron sobbing, the image of her throbbing in his head.  


  
She's just told Lucius Malfoy things she's often imagined telling him, under torture. She jumps when Lucius takes the cup from her and stares at her fiercely.  


  
"Together we will destroy him," he says.  


  
"Yes," she says, entirely unconvinced. Hermione doesn't want to be in this end-of-the-world bonding situation with this man. She is, guiltily, a bit glad to be free of the intense little trying-to-save-the-world team that is her, Harry and Ron, but she sees she has to make up one of these little outfits and she knows where she'd rather spend the war.  


  
She tells Lucius that they'd better find some residence in London. His eyes light up at that and Hermione knows that London means the Ministry to him. "This time yesterday he was the Minister," she thinks, staring at him with revulsion. "_The blood on his hands_ . . ." For a moment she can almost see the red, stinking cascade falling through his fingers and onto the bed and the floor. She has to turn aside to suppress a retch.  


  
They find a furnished flat to rent that very day, though the owner is not available for the formalities until the next morning. The man who shows them around is clearly wondering why they want to live together, or at least why Hermione wants to live with Lucius. Lucius, trailing along and staring absently, seems like he is on drugs, while Hermione is being particularly brisk, warm and sensible to make up for him. They are not to be taken for father and daughter, nor yet lovers.  


  
They are left in possession of the place early the next afternoon. Hermione at once bursts into tears and goes into what she has determined will be her bedroom – the larger of the two options. She sobs hard on her bed but feels constrained to stop sooner than she could have done because she's left Lucius alone in the living room. Hermione's anxious to keep him occupied.  


  
Lucius is sitting on the sofa, rocking slightly. Hermione sits glumly on the sofa arm for a long while. It isn't just wizarding society that is being ruined for generations; it's Britain, full stop. The _world_, let's face it. And the only people doing anything about it are Harry and Ron and the Order of the Phoenix – while Hermione and Lucius, officially dead, holed up in a Muggle flat together, are holding them up like an irritating customer fumbling with change at the end of a long, impatient queue.  


  
Hermione puts the television on – the news, Muggle politicians in the House of Commons in connection to some crisis or other; howls of "Hear hear!" and "Rubbish!" She distinctly sees Lucius brighten and clear a little – comforted by the familiar reek of politics, she notes with distaste.  


  
When the news ends Lucius asks, "I get the Prophet delivered. Will my owl find us?"  


  
"I don't think so, no," says Hermione, thinking regretfully of that distant bamboozled owl. "We'd better buy one ourselves and get a subscription under a false name."  


  
The television is now showing an antiques programme. The sight of bric-a-brac reminds Hermione unpleasantly of Horcruxes.  


  
The afternoon is spent trailing around Muggle suburbia. They visit the local library to avail themselves of the Yellow Pages. You have to be a registered pureblood now to buy an owl through wizarding channels, so they have to find one through Muggles. They also buy food and bedding – the flat does have some, but Hermione is too fastidious.  


  
The evening is spent plundering books from librarians and private collection. These are mainly located in Britain, but they also make tiring excursions to India, Norway and France. There is no librarian, no rich collector, no enchantment that they cannot walk past like nothing because there is no librarian, collector or enchantment to which Lucius and Hermione are not nothing. It serves to remind Hermione (again) of the scale of events. Everywhere they go, everyone knows Britain's Minister for Magic, cat's paw of He Who Must Not Be Named, and Hermione Granger, companion of Harry Potter.  


  
At a certain point they feel they have enough, and pile the booty in the living room. Hermione sits on the floor; she's flushed, her arms ache and her throat hurts from all the dust, but she's smiling. The books are a solid, protective presence, a balm for her soul against the sting that will almost certainly hit her when she has been through them all and has progressed no further than she is now. While she has them, Hermione will know she is doing all she can, and nothing more can be asked of her than that.  


  
She sees Lucius's hands on the books and is a little sickened. She sees that, for him as for her, the books are like stockpiling bottled water and tinned food in a siege. At least Hermione knows Lucius's reasons are slightly different. Even now, his life is brightened by being the owner of these books, legendary some of them (at least if you'd had enough exposure to books in general). Some of them are encrusted with jewels, some are supposed no longer extant by all but their erstwhile owners. Hermione watches Lucius's glib fingers and knows she must fear such easy satisfaction like the devil.  


  
The puzzle of a soul like Lucius's, to be so shallow, metallic, yet capable of such pain.  


  
In the morning Hermione finds Lucius already in the living room, looking harassed. He has the television on – what he really wants is the news. Hermione's tried explaining but he doesn't seem to understand that it won't just pop up all of a sudden. They eat breakfast, Hermione vibrating with fear, fear that they are embarking on the first of an infinite procession of failed days. She accidentally makes eye contact with Lucius. There's something sharp behind his eyes now, which reassures her a little. Hermione finishes her rice krispies and sets the bowl down on the coffee table with a flourish.  


  
"We'll start with runes," she declares.  



	2. Chapter 2

  
  
  
  
  


**Entry tags:**

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[fic](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/tag/fic), [hp](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/tag/hp), [the just and the unjust](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/tag/the%20just%20and%20the%20unjust)  
  
  
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_   
**The Just and the Unjust Part Two**   
_

  
The period that follows is rather like home schooling, with its combination of studying and messy projects. There is a great deal of ink involved. Hermione handles practicalities like the various degrees of stealing that procure the ink, ingredients for ink, knives for carving, wood and pebbles to be carved. She likes visiting the Muggle world – the consciousness of being seen gives her pleasure. She has slightly lost track of quite how she is being seen, though. She has runes daubed all over her arms, and her feet and legs are stained from trampling dubious things in the production of ink. She has ink in her hair, too, and she only remembers to brush it every so often.  


  
And her clothes are now noticeably unseasonal. Hermione is scrupulous about washing them every day, but she doesn't wear anything else, ever. She wears them to bed, flip-flops too, though they are generally dragged away by the bedclothes in the course of the night.  


  
Lucius irritates Hermione by leafing through books on revolution in between everything else. Even Muggle ones on France and Russia, though Hermione couldn't say what connection he sees between Marie Antoinette and Voldemort.  


  
Hermione is terrified of missing the one thing that might be important. She doesn't find much that she actually thinks might work, but she and Lucius systematically try everything. The ritual that leaves her with bitterness she doesn't want to think about crawling permanently across her back, they perform after they have a little talk.  


  
Hermione, in an idle moment, lays aside her notes and looks across at Lucius, lying on the floor and comparing sheets of alphabets. She braces herself against the back of the sofa and straightens her legs. Hermione looks at her legs intently. Somehow, she has started to find the warm simplicity of her own skin soothing. "This is history," she thinks. It seems so bizarre that Lucius has ended up in this room with her.  


  
Some deaths are such presences, and Hermione feels like she is sharing a flat with Draco's. Draco at school: such a horrible, trivial, sneering boy, who because of the times they live in, was always going to turn out worse than his mere personality dictated. As soon as Voldemort returned, Hermione knew she'd looked at him occasionally and thought, "You will do unspeakable things," with a tinge of incredulity. And it turned out Draco hadn't really wanted to do unspeakable things, but who knew what he had wanted to do? And then he'd been that human being Hermione saw end in those minutes of unbearable, bloody helplessness that nobody should ever witness. The whole thing seemed so pointless, and it wasn't really like the deaths she was used to – mourned murders, horrific massacres, or deaths that meant some small victory for herself and those she loves. Hermione suddenly feels obscurely angry that the fight against Voldemort has become about Lucius Malfoy and his personal feelings.  


  
She stands up. "Why are you here, Lucius?" she bursts out coldly. "I'm a Mudblood. A month ago you were happy to exterminate us all. How can you suddenly be alright with fighting on our side? You must have known Voldemort was bloody dangerous, or were you living in Cloud Cuckoo Land? How can one thing change things for you so much?"  


  
"I want to bring them all down," Lucius hisses hysterically before inhaling. "I _want_ him to change things," he says, looking at Hermione. "I want the history books to talk about things happening because of Draco Malfoy. He's _dead_. If I don't make things happen because of him, nothing will ever happen because of him again." Then his eyes flick away. "I suppose . . ." he says in exploratory tones, "I don't actually care about Mudbloods. I thought I did, but . . ."  


  
"You mean you always knew they were only people, like everyone is only people. And you didn't care what you did to people, because all that mattered to you was ambition and power and egotism. But even your pathetic little soul won't let you get that from the people who killed the only thing you actually had a soul about. You still have to dump it all somewhere, though, so I've got it. It's not even about you wanting revenge, is it? You just need an outlet."  


  
Lucius ducks his head. "This isn't the time for soul one-upmanship. What does it matter if I'm a self-seeking machine? I am here, and I am trying to defeat Voldemort. The only good thing about it is that while we're doing this, we don't need to worry about anything else." He waves a book at her. "I've had an idea, actually. We can always try the parallel chanting method with Kettilda's Alphabet. That way, if we tried that ritual, you never know, we might manage to channel enough power to . . ."  


  
They try it. Hermione has to draw up her tee shirt while Lucius writes on her back. Hermione has been playing the humouring game one plays with people who are dangerous or impaired in some way; pretending that everything about them is perfectly normal. She hasn't had to deal with Lucius, having brought up his evilness before, and it makes it more difficult for her to ignore it. It is odd having him just above her; he knows she knows he's evil, and this is awkward. When you think about it, such people usually only meet on terms of one doing evil to another, or the other wielding just punishment, not in social situations. If this could be so called.  
They finish the ritual, which indeed accomplishes nothing useful, and leaves behind those unpleasant sentiments all over back. Hermione feels the idiotic desire to backtrack and get back on an I'll Pretend You're Human footing. She tells him it must be difficult to be separated from his wife at a time like this.  


  
Lucius stares at her, his mouth open. "I'd forgotten about Narcissa," he says. "My God, I'd forgotten her entirely." Unlike his histrionics for Draco, he moves to hide the way his eyes have filled. He is silent for a long time. Hermione surmises that Lucius's solace was in having no responsibility other than revenge. Now he is recalled to the pain not only of having responsibilities, but also of being unable to carry them out. Hermione thinks of Narcissa, uneasy enough in her own home that she was practically living with friends at the time of Draco's death and missed the whole thing. Her son dead, her husband dead to her, and presumably her stock is low in Death Eater circles. Hermione knows she and Lucius both know Narcissa may be dead by now.  


  
There comes a time when they feel they really have exhausted all runic avenues. Hermione prepares herself to move onto the much broader and more alarming field of curses. Then she comes across a rather puzzling book and why she is trying to work out what kind of twaddle it is she realises it relates to what Muggles would call molecules. Hermione goes on a Well, It Would Be An Ironic Solution, Muggle Science drive. Of course, it would be nice if she'd been near the subject since primary school. Lucius surely has intelligence enough to be more helpful than he is, but he expends most of his energy in keeping his scornful amusement free of anything that might remind her too vividly that he kills Muggles. Tortures them, for fun. Hermione thinks Lucius is frightened that he might make her feel threatened enough to try to kill him. Then he would have to kill her, and where would he be then?  


  
It's all just poking around in the dark, like everything else. At the end of her investigations Hermione concludes that she might just have found out how to unravel the universe. However, she has no idea how to develop the finesse and specification necessary to blow up one enchanted cup. "So," thinks Hermione, "we can come back to that when we've exhausted _everything_." She startles suddenly. Hermione worries that she has come to feel like God, secluded with so much in her hands. It is not up to her to decide the world is not good enough and throw it away. She remembers that even the Nazis only aimed for a Thousand year Reich. Nothing lasts, and if that is tragedy, it is also the greatest mercy the world has to offer. Hermione thinks of Lucius messing around with his Deathstick, and tries to convince herself that such things are the province only of fools. If this were a fairytale, there would be no doubt that Voldemort, with his unbeatable wand he is so proud to be the master of, will over-reach himself and come to a sticky end. The Wand is the magic porridge pot, the emperor's new clothes, and Voldemort is the fool who chooses gold over lead.  


  
In an inappropriately cheerful comparison, Hermione remembers Ginny saying how Fred and George made you feel that anything was possible if only you had enough nerve. What if Voldemort has more nerve than anyone ever had before and has managed to break all the truths, all the rules? Hermione despairs for a moment before steeling herself. If the world was to be naked of good and evil and it all came down to nerve at the end, she and Lucius would just have to try having the most.  


  
*  


  
Curses are a much more academic field of study. They're incredibly intricate, both in themselves and the way they connect with so much else. Other curses, other branches of magic altogether, historical events. Language pops up again. They lose themselves in it all; Lucius does so from a starting assumption that curses are, for want of a better word, fun. Hermione finds it more stimulating than that last Arithmancy project. She realises that aside from the sex with Ron, that was the last time Hermione really felt like she was doing anything she was _meant_ for. The fact that researching curses like these is harrowing like being shut in a cinema showing nothing but news footage from war zones only makes it better. It's hard to feel too guilty about enjoying herself.  


  
Lucius, though, grows a little restless and tires of following twentieth century Muggle history. (Hermione doesn't know whether he is trying to decide what manner of monster he aims to be, or if he is sincerely trying to work out where truth and freedom lie.) He tires of the Daily Prophet, which is certainly a baffling and distressing reading experience for anyone actually wanting the news, and starts on Muggle newspapers, instead of just staring in that odd, glazed way at the television whenever politicians appear.  


  
When dealing with print Lucius is freed from this reaction, and Hermione her irritated response to it. Life seems to have become even more alarming while they were busy. Voldemort has insinuated many of his foreign supporters into the Muggle governments of various Eastern European countries, who are now threatening Britain. Hermione can't imagine what his ultimate game plan is, but it does achieve the purposes of extending his power both geographically and into Muggle affairs.  


  
There is a great deal of veiled language used. The aggressors insist that "supremacy must be recognised" and talk of Britain's corrupt ideology. The British government in turn talks about the ideology of freedom and the foreign secretary gives an hysterical speech no one understands about how "We may be mundane, but we can't be _treated_ like this!"  


  
Hermione had vaguely wondered when Eastern Europe became so powerful, and so much spoken of as one country, but nothing else had registered.  


  
"I suppose it's the Albanian connection," says Lucius.  


  
"Lots of vampires and werewolves in Eastern Europe," Hermione says unhappily. "The poor government, they must be terrified. All they know is that the Order's the right side, and they're not getting much support from them at the moment."  


  
"It's all about these little battles at the moment," agrees Lucius. "And failed attempts at intelligence gathering."  


  
Hermione bares her teeth at him. "And of course, if things were different you'd be in the thick of all this and having a marvellous time!"  


  
Lucius looks cold. "Things are how they are. If it makes you feel better, there's nothing like ending up on the other side to get you caring a little bit about how fucking unfair it all is."  


  
They get back to the research, but with a lessened conviction that any of it is worthwhile. Hermione begins to think of that sliver of wood Lucius left behind. The wand it came from probably hadn't been destroyed at the time, though it probably has since, and she's sure Lucius could have summoned it. She wonders what it could have done. Maybe that wand was the solution was the key to destroying the Horcruxes, and they left it behind at the very beginning of their quest. But however much she wants to kick herself and Lucius, the greater part of her knows that it would have been morally impossible to pursue that line of enquiries. That wand, and what it represented to Lucius, was what killed Draco. Some means are so dirty that they soil the ends, even if the means may not be achieved otherwise.  


  
A week or two later London is hit by two bombs – Canary Wharf and Oxford Street – and Eastern Europe tells Britain, "You know why," which of course is more than millions of Muggles do know. Hermione finally knows just how Harry feels when people die because he feels that he isn't doing what he's supposed to fast enough.  


  
They sit in front of the television. "He's probably going to intimidate the Muggles, use them to root out the last remaining Mudbloods and blood traitors, then set up a dictatorship over the whole country so Muggles have their place and no one has a life worth calling their own," says Hermione furiously, past the obstruction of fear in her throat.  


  
Lucius casts through a sheaf of notes with jerky irritation. Then he flings them aside and with real earnestness says, "Look, we've got to do something."  


  
"What?"  


  
"Tell the Muggles. It won't do them a damn bit of good, but it's their fucking country too. Why shouldn't they deal with this for a change?"  


  
Hermione thinks about the chaos such an action would unleash and knows Lucius yearns for it just because it would take the pressure off them a little.  


  
"You're dehumanising them!" Lucius cries. "If people don't know the world they live in then how can they possibly have a right to it? This is why Muggles and Mudbloods have always been in this situation; this is why they don't have rights."  


  
"But they'll be so stupid about it!" Hermione feels like this is a betrayal, but, "It's not a Muggle thing, it's a human thing."  


  
"Better to be stupid in the real world than some world invented for you by someone who thinks they know better. The world is full of bloody peasants. We'll just have to get used to sharing it with them."  


  
"But they'll be _terrified_," pleads Hermione.  


  
"So they should be! Their country's been taken over by a terrifying person. They're probably going to be exterminated in the end, what have they got to lose by a bit of terror? Won't it make you feel cleaner, not having to watch everything happening and knowing you're the only one who understands it?"  


  
Trooping uncertainly around the sofa, Hermione angers as soon as she hears the word "cleaner."  


  
"Nothing can absolve you from the things you have done." She pokes her fist hard into the back of Lucius's neck. "There is no clean or cleaner for anyone now. There is just a mess."  


  
"I know there's nothing clean. But there's the cleanest thing available, the last right, the dirty truth."  


  
While he was speaking, Hermione spat, "I am the generation that's being flushed down the toilet," in a sudden fit of feverish resentment. Catching up with Lucius she screams, "Oh, stop it. You think you can change things when you call them different names. Don't talk to me about the truth, and morals. You wouldn't know the right thing if it came up and knifed you in the ribs. And don't talk crap about wanting to share the world with the Muggles. What makes you think Muggles want to live with you? All the laws, they aren't to protect wizards from Muggles, they're to protect them from us. If Muggles didn't have to be kept ignorant they'd be completely fair game. What would keep wizards like you from going out and tormenting them whenever they felt like it, if not wanting to be all secret and safe in their own little society?"  


  
Lucius looks nonplussed at this belated preaching to the choir. "Don't you think it's the secret little society stuff that got us here? We don't agree with that, do we?" He sounds surprised but prepared for the possibility that he may have mistaken everything in his life, ever. Reassured by Hermione's exasperated look, he says, "Of course balance is a marvellous thing, but that will probably take generations." He says this like someone who has been reading history books and is used to finding out how things turned out in the end, like he doesn't quite realise these things seem a lot slower in real life, and whole generations come and go in the time it takes for things to go right again. Hermione reads history books too, and she is ready to tell him all this.  


  
"About "the right thing,"" Lucius says loudly. "The right thing is knowledge. All right, forget cleaner. The only way out now is if as many people as possible are prepared to get dirty and go wrong. _Our_ way out is dirty – scrabbling around in books for twisted things people made in their heads – but that's all we've got. If we let the fools know they're screwed, it might make the world a dirtier place, but knowledge is the dirt that illuminates. Maybe they'll think of something useful."  


  
Hermione feels she has to stop him before he grows any more enamoured with the sound of his own voice. She can tell that if she lets him go on he will spout all kinds of metaphors to do with lost virginity and manure fed crops.  


  
"Alright. I suppose there's a point to some of what you're saying." Hermione looks at the ambulances on the television. "I suppose there really is nothing we can do that would make things worse than they will be in a few months." They take a few minutes wandering around the flat gathering a selection of their wits, wands, and bottles of water – Hermione sees Lucius plans to use his voice. "You know, I don't think either of us are very nice people," Hermione says. "It's a poor lookout for the world having us practically in charge. We shouldn't be allowed to make these decisions."  


  
"Everyone else is even more evil than us," Lucius says frivolously, sticking a bunch of Prophets under his arm.  


  
*  


  
They go on a whistle-stop tour of the nation. They choose a city centre and stand making exhibitions of themselves shouting the dread tidings.  


  
"The whole country is under his control," shrieks Hermione exasperatedly. "He thinks you are all _eleventh_ class citizens; you are under threat! Eastern Europe is all his fault! The people responsible for those bombs are wizards!"

Beside her, Lucius rolls his eyes. "Perhaps I was wrong," he says. "Perhaps they simply are too stupid."  


  
They try to halt a man hurrying by.  


  
"Fuck off," he snarls.  


  
"Levicorpus!" says Lucius. "We are trying to help," he grinds out at the man thrashing upside down. "Why can't you understand? There is a very bad wizard who is going to get you. Almost everyone is on his side, but we are on the right side, and we thought you ought to have a little warning. But I can't think why we bothered."  


  
He flings the man away, out of the enchantment, and looks about him, mad enough to stamp. No one really watched the levitation; anyone who saw it fleetingly took it for some feat of illusion or technology. The passers' complete inattention is bland and smooth as enamel, despite its purportedly being a time of great national stress and shock. Hermione actually stamps. She pulls out her wand. She mutters her spiel into the end of it, while her words pour out in vaporously fluffy green and purple ectoplasm, which float off into the crowd, calling out their message in clear calm tones. People bat them aside in irritation or peer at them in bafflement, trying to work how it's done. Then Hermione and Lucius really lose their temper and run around enchanting everything in sight. Finally, the enamel of inattention is chiselled into splinters of shock, and there is a hysterical crowd they can remonstrate into some kind of sense.  


  
*  


  
When they return, Apparating staggeringly into the living room they'd vacated hours before, it is past the middle of the night, and the country is wide awake. Hermione promptly takes the phone off the hook, having given half of England the number. They collapse on the sofa, giggling breathlessly. From the flat beneath them, and through the walls, comes the sound of their own voices, broadcast on television.  


  
After they'd gone through the whole thing all over again a few times people had seen them on television before they popped up. Hermione feels like a singer who's just done dozens of concerts in one night. She's been reading aloud from, and distributing like loaves and fishes, modern history books on Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter, explained the Horcrux situation, tried to get out of explaining how magic works (no one actually knows) and got into a lot of shouting matches. The more they go on the more out of control people become, and try to physically tackle them. Hermione has been caught on camera shrieking, "I am a nice person, I swear," after a string of defensive jinxes leads to a sharp up-rise in screams.  


  
So now they know. Hermione and Lucius feel they can leave them alone for a little bit to see how they get on. They take a dose of sleep suppressants and survey the books with disdain.  


  
"Is there a way," Hermione says slowly, "of telling that cup, magically of course, that we know how to destroy it? You know, like a double bluff?"  


  
"I don't know what you mean," says Lucius.  


  
"In that book about magical safe-breaking, there was a Charm, rather like Confundus, only for inanimate objects. It confused the safe and made it think the number you put in was the right one, so it opened for you. If we adapted that, then maybe the cup wouldn't know to defend itself when we try to destroy it."  


  
"So then," says Lucius, "instead of trying to find a club big enough to bash its head in despite its struggles, it stops struggling. So we can use a normal size club?"  


  
"If you like," says Hermione. "So that when we try, it goes "oh all right then," because it thinks it's all up anyway," she adds more eagerly.  


  
They sit with the book and paper and a pencil, making dozens of infinitesimal alterations to the syllables and wand movements. When they've adapted the charm, Lucius and Hermione place the cup in the centre of the floor with a distinctly "Ah ha, we've got you," attitude. When they've performed the charm they try several standard destruction spells, all of which fail as usual. Somehow the "Ah ha" attitude remains.  


  
"Let's invent something," Hermione says grandly. Her brain is swarming with the things she'd like to do to that cup, her body is filled with adrenaline and she feels as if she has superpowers tonight. She feels like she could push her own essence out through the walls of her body to wreak its will upon that one bloody cup.  


  
Lucius looks at her in surprised amusement. There are millions of spells known to western wizards, and fewer than twenty wizards are credited with their creation. This is fairly misleading because thousands of them are adaptations that have taken on an entirely new life of their own, but the fact remains that by and large, when people make up spells, they are so much gibberish and don't work. Dumbledore, and his razor sharp intelligence and his dragon's blood experimentation, and Snape with his brooding resentment and clever adaptations were about as far as it went.  


  
But for some reason the cup looks like a prisoner in the dock today. Lucius crouches down to its level thoughtfully. "We can always try," he says.  


  
Something in the day seems to have shone a great searchlight, composed of malice mainly, reaching into the further reaches of Hermione's soul – further back than she knew it went, and it is finding things. She dwells on all the pictures of physical destruction she has in her mind, and there are equations rattling about loose in there too, and they seem to her to have a kind of internal logic. What's more, they are the same shape as the images and can be wrapped around them like cloaks so that the images can stroll out into the world like Hermione had imagined her spirit doing. She makes up words that represent the equations, and the wand movements to go with them. _It all makes sense_, she is sure of it, though usually everything without a base in an existing spell is just gibberish. This is supposed to be because there are now enough spell words to express all existing magic. Hermione, flushed, fists clenched, thinks only one thing, through everything else that is happening inside her: _this didn't use to exist. I've put something in the world that wasn't here before, and it needs words_. The something appears to be her spite.  


  
Lucius is busy at the same thing and he and Hermione splice their inventions together and joyfully greet conclusions coming several reasonings early.  


  
Together they create a curse, an intricate, delicately worked masterpiece of gleeful spite and destruction. They fill sheets of parchment with notations like so many gleaming little nails in a coffin. Lucius and Hermione end up sitting in the centre of the room, surrounded by a circle of scattered parchment and little burnt-out wrecks (tentative experiments) while they scribble down the final draft. Hermione is glowing because each element, each nail has its place and a target, and together they make something absolutely dreadful that Hermione knows will do exactly the job they want it to. Because, she keeps thinking incredulously, they have managed to hate Voldemort so much that the hatred has become a separate entity in the universe. Because, she supposes, and wants to laugh, of all the people in the universe who hate Voldemort, only she and Lucius are just that self-righteous and pompous.  


  
They fetch the cup and make a magical circle for it, small because of the lines of runes bristling around the edges. The curse takes hours to perform though neither of them tires of it; it is like picking up a beautiful musical instrument and playing it perfectly. There is no tense waiting at the end; the cup is already glowing like an ember when they begin the final – not sentence, exactly, more like _breath_ – and as they speak the last words the thing flakes and curls into ashes.  


  
There is a small local earthquake neither of them notices, which kills two people.  


  
Hermione and Lucius shriek with triumph. Lucius reaches for the lump of ashes and rubs his hands with them as if he is lathering them with soap. The shriek is mingled with a careless squawk as he burns his hands and Hermione quickly slaps his fingers to dislodge the ash. Shakily, they climb out of the circle. The most nourishing thing they have is a packet of iced buns, and they sit on the sofa with them and a bottle of wine that Hermione bought, vaguely feeling they ought to have alcohol in the house.  


  
"Well, knowledge wasn't the key to all," says Hermione. "We made it up!"  


  
"Yes, it was," says Lucius. "We had to invent the forbidden fruit ourselves, that's all. Don't tell me you don't know a thousand dirty dreadful things today that you didn't know yesterday. You couldn't have known them before today because they didn't exist then." Lucius smirks, dreamily bemused, into the middle distance. "I am going to be celebrated righteously in the history books for inventing the blackest curse of all time with a little Muggle witch, boon companion of Harry Potter."  


  
"Think how I feel," says Hermione, contemplating the history books with feelings a little more mixed.  


  
Lucius puts on the television to see what learning dirty, dreadful things has done for the rest of the population. Rather a lot, it appears. There are three "Ministries", for a start. There is the corrupt one Lucius was running, a wizard-Muggle Ministry headed by Kingsley Shacklebolt, and an all-Muggle affair rather like the bands made up of talent show rejects, i.e., a bunch of cross, confused politicians who think someone ought to be looking after the Muggle interest and can't see anyone else doing it.  


  
Having erupted out of the closet, there are wizards and witches on the television, filmed on doorsteps accounting for centuries of history, and in television studios trying to explain themselves to scientists. Some of these are fugitives; others probably live near the families of Muggleborns who know a wizard when they see one. All of them are terribly perplexed by all this talk of the middle-aged wizard and a young witch who started the whole thing. When they are shown the footage of Lucius and Hermione and told their names they do not recognise the people they know for dead, but see unidentifiable strangers and don't understand why someone, somewhere, doesn't know them. Lucius and Hermione had told the Muggles all about that aspect of things, and they are politely fascinated to see it in action. It is all very Scarlet Pimpernel.  


  
There have been mass Obliviations, some carried out by the Ministry for Magic, some by members of the wizarding public who are outraged at this encroachment upon tradition. And the Muggle public are managing plenty of riots and mass suicides, but that was only to be expected.  


  
Hermione feels the need to reach out, and puts the phone back on its cradle. She has a few random conversations before speaking to a woman from a second-hand jewellery shop who thinks she has Slytherin's locket. Hermione rolls her eyes, but then the woman describes Mundungus Fletcher, and the way the locket has been bought three times but found sinister and brought back, and how she now keeps it in a drawer.  


  
"I told you so," says Lucius. They Apparate to the woman's voice, and appear in her house while she is still holding the phone. The woman's name is Caroline, and on the whole she seems more curious than frightened. She drives them to her shop. It takes them rather a long time because they have to get past a riot. Hermione thinks it started as a particularly brutal Obliviation attempt, but then again maybe it was Muggles tracking down and attacking wizards. She distinctly sees old Nott trampled to the ground, his wand plucked from his hands and snapped in half. She recognises members of the Order, clearly alarmed that however it started it was going to become a killing spree. There are bodies everywhere and flashes of green light and people beating each other to death.  


  
Hermione has a feeling almost of freedom, in that odd way you experience the alarming sensation of flight while falling down the stairs and don't yet know whether you've broken your neck or not. This is all she can feel at the realisation she may have broken the world.  


  
The thing is, it could be just another war, another revolution, another atrocity. Or it could be the Second Fall, or Armageddon, which is surely coming one of these days. The moment everyone half expects to happen in their lifetime, when the nest will be fouled beyond all living in and the best humanity can hope for is to be called to account and asked what it thinks it's up to.  


  
Caroline asks what Hermione is wondering. "Is this going to turn into mass genocide?"  


  
Lucius sounds surprised. "Well, there are so many of you," he says, in the tones of someone who has never quite got over this. "I mean, there _will_ be plenty of killings, but You-Know-Who . . ." he trails off.  


  
"I think it's like wanting to go to your own funeral or, more to the point, killing someone and wanting them to admit afterwards that you were right all along. Voldemort is deeply puerile," Hermione says primly. She and Lucius look grimly ruminative, both having had to spend years considering Voldemort's psychology. "I daresay he'd like to annihilate you," she pronounces, "but either he has plans for you or you really are beneath his notice."  


  
"Though you never know," says Lucius. "He does have a lot of followers. He doesn't have to do everything himself."  


  
Caroline says, "Is he like Saint Paul? Or should I be frightened?"  


  
"Saint P – oh, the road to Damascus." Hermione supposes Caroline thinks Lucius won't understand a biblical reference. She shrugs uneasily. Lucius spreads his hands in front of him for a moment in what seems like a melodramatic gesture, as if he is examining them for blood, but he's probably just seeing what the salve he put on has done for his burns.  


  
When they get home, in possession of the locket, they sleep for a while. Hermione sleeps longer than Lucius and he has to wake her up. For a while now, Hermione has been humming both before and during sleep. This is mainly to stop her worrying about being attacked in her sleep; she knows there is no point in worrying about self-defence if she's rendered unable to hear anything over the whine of I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside, or These Boots Are Made For Walking.  


  
They perform the curse again, and somehow it takes a lot less time than before. Hermione is a little more frightened of it now the flush of invention has worn off and it doesn't merely seem like her own effluvia. And this time there is the dull remembrance that there is still one more Horcrux, and they have no idea what or where it is.  


  
*  


  
They get involved with the all Muggle Ministry in the weeks that follow. All activity takes place in people's houses and occasional town halls, because the Wizard-Muggle Ministry has bagged the Houses of Parliament. Having finally made progress by getting things into books, Lucius and Hermione are unable to convince themselves that there is anything to be got out of them.  


  
Lucius sings like a canary so that, indirectly, information on Death Eaters and the Ministry for Magic gets back to the Order of the Phoenix. Hermione could not say why, but she suspects Lucius is often throwing people's families to the Order after the one who loves them, the main target. She doesn't do anything. At the moment such things appear in the light of shoddy foible.  


  
Eastern Europe drops more bombs, killing a thousand or so. It is the all Muggle Ministry who send some back, with the air of distractedly lobbing back a crumpled ball of paper. Hermione idly wonders how the Muggles in the rest of the world over are taking it, let alone those of Eastern Europe. No one has the time to find out.  


  
Hermione keeps herself very busy. She arranges a kind of channel of intelligence to keep tabs on the wizarding world. For a start, the wizards willing to interact with the Muggle world are interacted with for all they're worth. She could probably find the Weasleys, but she cannot bear to. She looks up all the half-blood witches and wizards she can and tries to get their families reporting to her. Sometimes this is a dead end because they have been told a lot about wizarding affairs and know whom she and Lucius are, and that they are dead.  


  
Hermione can now understand the boiling discomfort that Voldemort must feel, wanting to destroy people. She imagines gripping the population by throat and bringing it down like a club on these stupid, stupid people who are ruining everything. The side she is on is killing people these days, so what outrages her most now against Voldemort and the people who support him is their stupidity more than their evilness. Never has it seemed less important whether someone is wizard, Muggleborn or Muggle. Hermione constantly wants to scream, "Don't you get it?" as if they are vile three year olds who have not learned the difference between right and wrong. What with this and perpetual mental exhortation to everyone to make it all right somehow, fight somehow, she has dialogue forever running through her head. It spills out into earnest speeches when journalists and cameramen ask her questions on doorsteps.  


  
All of this proves a thousand times more constructive than they'd imagined when the brother of a Muggleborn, posing as half-blood, Death Eater emerges with second-hand claims of the seventh Horcrux. The Horcrux is, allegedly, the Mirror of Erised, buried in the middle of what was once a standing stone circle near Malfoy Manor. Considering the dubious source, they might have been pleased merely to hear anything at all about Horcruxes, but it rings pleasantly true. The Mirror is a good, grandiose artefact, just the thing for a Horcrux. Lucius and Hermione discuss the affair of the Philosopher's Stone – Hermione being the one who actually knows what happened – and decide that it is most unlikely the Mirror was a Horcrux then.  


  
"He must have had another, and either he wasn't satisfied with it or –"  


  
"He wanted to subjugate the Mirror to prove himself the master of it after its part in his defeat," says Hermione with familiar scorn.  


  
"- And at some point after his return he got hold of it and transferred that part of his soul to it."  


  
They feel they know the curse well enough now to leave their papers at home. Of course, some back-up would be nice but they don't have any access to it. They Apparate out to the spot – Lucius knew at once the place referred to – alone on a bracingly raw November afternoon, having spent the previous hours acquiring three Nifflers. They crouch down on the cold, slightly mud-sticky ground, to watch their progress with anxious wishing hearts. A white edge emerges and they wade through the loosely mounded earth to tug the thing free and back across the dirt pile. They pull the Mirror free from the waxed paper and manage to prop it up on the solitary stone left in the "circle".  


  
"Oh my God," breathes Hermione, reaching out to stroke the frame as she would trace the curve of a lover's mouth.  


  
"The last one apart from _him_," says Lucius, with the soft, sinister laugh that irritates Hermione.  


  
They are not standing facing the Mirror but rather at right angles to it, one on either side. That is probably why they don't at all know how they enter the Mirror. In terms of Horcruxes, the Mirror really is a bit special.  


  
Hermione can't see Lucius, though their hands, clasped together, are slippery with sweat. She can hear their feet pounding as they hurtle through what vaguely resembles a glass forest. They are encased in constantly shifting tunnels, the walls of which seem to move right through them. At first the walls look silver with looking-glass but then fill with images. A tidal wave of blood curls towards them and Hermione feels wet – with blood, though that is because a sheet of glass just crashed over them. As soon as they entered, she and Lucius began to perform the curse; she can just hear Lucius's and her own voice and she is almost sure they are doing it right. Although how it can work under these conditions . . .  


  
The walls seem to jump over her and under her like waves, flooding her with images. She sees herself, a wand at her back, torturing her mother and father under Imperio. She sees herself, without any sign of coercion, shoot a jet of green light over her shoulder. She sees a great wall of books falling, Harry facing Voldemort, his face set and prepared for death, Ron shouting, on the verge of tears. Draco dies over and over in many different ways. Narcissa cradles him, both as a baby and as a young man, in death. Dementors, prison cells, Narcissa, always out of reach. A crowd of people trampling itself to death, a huge fire with black garments flickering deep inside it.  


  
Hermione has a stitch and is entirely out of breath but still she manages to get the curse out. She listens anxiously for Lucius panting out his share. She doesn't know whether they have quite finished the curse – again, it seems shorter than the time before – before she and Lucius scream together at the sensation of being forced outside themselves. It only lasts a moment, like tweaking a muscle out of place, and then they trip over their own naked, gutted corpses. As the glass collapses over and around them, Hermione covers her head with her arms and cowers into her own cold corpse. Lucius ignores the falling glass except to snatch a bolt of jagged looking-glass and attack Corpse Lucius with it. Then –  


  
Hermione feels the wind on her neck, and damp beneath her knees, and they are in the countryside again. She kneels up amidst the glass shattered all around them. Running towards them Hermione can see Remus and Tonks, shooting curses over their shoulders at three Death Eaters pursuing them. Narcissa is running behind them all.  


  
"I'm undead!" Hermione says, her voice clear and surprised. She grasps Lucius's arm but, his face like a nightmarer who won't wake up, he jerks the bolt of glass at her and it slashes her cheek. Hermione hears Remus's voice say "Avada Kedavra", and a great beam of green light shoots towards them, narrowly missing Hermione and hitting Lucius in the chest. She stares as he falls on his back, mouth falling open a little, eyes completely dead and reflecting the grey-white sky. Hermione instantly kicks him hard in the ribs, seething with some obscure instinct of outrage.  


  
"After all that!" she thinks blankly. Narcissa stops, her shoulders sagging, before slowly continuing forwards. Hermione feels Remus and Tonks grip her arms hard. Tonks says, "Oh my God," into her neck, her voice catching. They disapparate away with her, leaving Narcissa frozen in tableau just for a second perhaps, staring down at Lucius.  


  
*  


  
Seven months later, peace is declared.  


  
_fin_   


  



End file.
